Robert Strauss, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, checks out one of the delegates' telephones at the Kansas City Auditorium, site of the Mid-Term Democratic Party Conference. The telephones connect the delegations with the speaker's podium.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Robert Strauss (left) and Jim Mattox.

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Gary Barnet
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Staff Photographer
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Robert Strauss - attorney

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David Woo
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Staff Photographer
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Lloyd Bentsen (left) and Robert Strauss (center).

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DMN File
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Mayor Richard J. Daley (LEFT), an important Strauss ally in the Democratic Party, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis with Helen (front left) and Bob Strauss (front right) at the 1976 Democratic National Convention."

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Helen Strauss Scrapbook Collection
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Digital File_UPLOAD
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CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite holds up the hands of Republican National Committee Chairman George Bush, left, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss during Thursday's Circus Saints and Sinners Club luncheon in Washington, March 8, 1974. Bush and Strauss put on the gloves for what was called the "Battle of the Century." Both were delcared winners by Cronkite.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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President Jimmy Carter?s chief inflation fighter Robert Strauss Takes his seat in Washington on Monday Dec. 3, 1979 to comment on statement Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., with regard to the hostage situation. Strauss feared the statements would cause Iran?s leaders to misread Americas' opinion and perhaps undermine President Carter?s efforts to win release of the hostages.

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IRA SCHWARZ
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AP
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President Jimmy Carter greets Luci Johnson Nugent, youngest daughter of the late President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, during Carter's visit to Dallas, March 25, 1979. President Johnson's widow Lady Bird is at the right and host Special Trade Ambassador Robert Strauss is at center. The president was in Dallas to address the National Association of Broadcasters convention and paid a brief visit to the Strauss home.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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President Jimmy Carter (left) shakes hands with Ambassador Robert Strauss after Carter named Strauss to be a special Middle East negotiator to carry out "crucial, important" post Egyptian-Israeli treaty talks on Palestinian autonomy at the White House April 24.

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Ronald Bennett
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UPI
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Ambassador Robert Strauss, special trade negotiator, rests a hand on the shoulder of President Jimmy Carter, following a Rose Garden signing ceremony for a new trade liberalization bill at the White House in Washington on July 26, 1979. Carter said the bill would create jobs, spur exports, and enhance prospects for peace.

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Dennis Cook
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AP
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President Jimmy Carter shakes hands with the manager of his unsuccessful re-election campaign at a White House reception in Washington on Dec. 9, 1980. Mrs. Robert Strauss examines the Norman Rockwell painting the president presented to Strauss,

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Dennis Cook
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Chief of Staff Howard Baker (right, middle) invited Bob and Helen to use their bipartisan skills at a small White House luncheon celebrating Senate majority leader Bob Byrd's fiftieth wedding anniversary. Strauss received frequent invitations to the White House during the Reagan Administration.

Republican National Chairman George Bush, standing, talks about the Watergate case and Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss listens during a joint appearance before the National Press Club on April 18, 1973 in Washington.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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U.S. President George Bush (c) shown in this file picture dated 01 February 1992 in Camp David, Maryland, points to a pair of Texas cowboy boots he gave to Russian President Boris Yeltsin (l) on his 61st birthday while U.S. Ambassador to Russia Robert Strauss (r) looks on. The boots are decorated with metal plates representing the maps and flags of the U.S. and Russia.

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DAVID VALDEZ
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AFP/Getty Images
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Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss.

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Associated Press
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March 26, 1979 - As the President attended a lunch in his back yard, Robert Strauss brought fried chicken and beer to members of the press corps stationed in front of his house.

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larry provart
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DMN File
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Robert Strauss, left, is sworn in as ambassador to the Soviet Union by Secretary of State James A. Baker III during a White House ceremony, Tuesday, August 20, 1991 in Washington. Strauss' wife, Helen, and President Bush look on.

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Barry Thumma
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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May 30, 1979 - PEKING - Ambassador Robert Strauss (left), U. S. special trade representative, confers with Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping May 30. China and the U.S. again ran into a deadlock May 30 on crucial negotiations to limit Chinese textile imports and only a high-level intervention seemed likely to save the pact vital to China-United States trade.

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UPI
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WASHINGTON — Robert S. “Bob” Strauss, the colorful Dallas lawyer who became one of the nation’s top political figures as Democratic Party chairman and later held high governmental posts under presidents of both parties, died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Washington. He was 95.

Strauss developed personal ties to leading Democrats and Republicans and a unique standing that enabled him to survive the twists and turns of political fate.

He advised presidents of both parties, from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, and was named to key government positions by Presidents Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and George H.W. Bush, a Republican.

In the 1970s, he served Carter as special trade representative, inflation czar and Middle East negotiator. In 1991, he was tapped by the elder Bush as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

“Barbara and I mourn the passing of a Texan of legendary influence, whose lifelong devotion to the Democratic Party never precluded his ability to work across the aisle on matters of national importance,” Bush said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “He was a particularly effective advocate for America’s interests during that tenuous time as the Soviet Union imploded and a democratic Russia emerged.”

President Barack Obama said Strauss was one of the greatest leaders the Democratic Party ever had.

“Yet presidents of both parties relied on his advice, his instincts and his passion for public service — not to mention his well-honed sense of humor. ... Bob was truly one of a kind,” the president said.

Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk said the first person he turned to after becoming U.S. trade representative in 2009 was Strauss, who had held the job three decades earlier and provided encouragement.

“Nothing gave me more pleasure than ... being able to occupy an office that was shaped and molded by Strauss,” Kirk said. “For all the stereotypes about Texans being full of life and gumption, he was all that and more.”

Colorful, irreverent

A brash and publicity-conscious man, Strauss cultivated close friendships with the press as well as with politicians of both parties. And he often defined himself by telling colorful anecdotes about himself.

He once explained that he built a swimming pool at his Dallas home because, while none of his family particularly liked to swim, he liked to come home at night, fix a drink, sit by the pool and say, “Bob Strauss, you’re one rich son of a bitch.”

But he also was able to put himself into perspective. He recalled a story about a conversation one night with Helen, his wife of more than 60 years and constant traveling companion.

“‘Helen, you know when you stop to think about it, there aren’t very many great leaders in this country,’” he said he told her. “And Helen paused and then she said, ‘You know, dear, I think you’re right. And I suspect there’s even one less than you think right now.’”

Despite such irreverence and his many years as a major political figure, fundraiser and successful Washington lawyer-lobbyist, Strauss rarely encountered much criticism.

“He’s the only man in American politics who could go through a carwash with the top down and not get wet,” the late U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., once said.

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News at the time of his 75th birthday in 1993, Strauss said that, despite his long period of political prominence, he had never given a thought on how he would be remembered. “My friends will remember me,” he said.

And he said he had no regrets about anything in his long and colorful life: “I like the whole damn deal.”

The son of a dry-goods salesman in the small West Texas town of Stamford, Strauss became a successful Dallas lawyer in the 1950s and a close political ally of the late John Connally in the 1960s.

But it was not until the early 1970s, when he was in his 50s, that Strauss emerged on the national scene as the treasurer of the Democratic Party, which was deeply in debt at the time.

After Democrats became badly fractured in their 1972 election debacle, he was elected party chairman with the backing of top governors and congressional leaders.

He was widely credited with the reunification effort that helped Carter, a one-term former Georgia governor, win back the White House in 1976.

Despite an initially difficult relationship with the new president, whose candidacy he had not personally favored, Strauss soon became a major figure in his administration.

He served Carter as trade representative, Middle East negotiator and inflation fighter before assuming the chairmanship of the president’s unsuccessful 1980 re-election campaign.

Wielded great clout

During the Republican administrations that followed, Strauss became one of the capital’s most powerful lawyer-lobbyists. He cultivated close relationships with top figures in both parties, such as fellow Texan James Baker, who held top posts in the Reagan and Bush administrations.

In June 1991, President Bush, a close friend since the two men had headed their respective national parties in the 1970s, stunned the political world by naming Strauss U.S. ambassador to what was then the Soviet Union.

After the longtime Cold War adversary broke apart, Strauss became the first U.S. ambassador to the successor republic, Russia, working to develop closer ties between President Boris Yeltsin and the U.S. He remained ambassador through the 1992 presidential election.

Though Strauss was out of the country while Arkansas’ Bill Clinton mounted the campaign that ousted Bush from the White House, he soon began to cultivate relations with the new Democratic administration.

Six months after Clinton took office, Strauss presided over a highly publicized Washington dinner for Clinton and Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, long a close Strauss friend.

However, he never became close to Clinton, the first Democratic president in 12 years, and was rarely asked for advice by either Clinton or by Vice President Al Gore, the party’s unsuccessful 2000 presidential nominee.

“It was a very big mistake for them to waste his extraordinarily great political instincts,” said Mark Siegel, a veteran Democratic strategist who was one of Strauss’ top aides when he was party chairman. “Bob Strauss could have told Al Gore how to win West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas,” any one of which would have enabled him to win the 2000 election.

Soon after President George W. Bush was inaugurated, he summoned Strauss and a group of fellow Democratic elders to give him advice for his new job.

Over the years, Strauss became legendary for his efforts on behalf of others, often with little or no publicity. He arranged adoptions for childless couples and helped raise legal defense funds for such leading Republicans as longtime Reagan advisers Lyn Nofziger and Micheal Deaver.

Early aspirations

Strauss was born on Oct. 18, 1918, in Lockhart, a small town outside Austin that is best known for its barbecue. He grew up in Stamford, north of Abilene. His mother was a native Texan, his father a German immigrant who ran the local dry-goods store.

His mother’s dream was that her son would become the first Jewish governor of Texas.

“It got to be sort of a family joke,” Strauss once recalled. “But my mother was dead serious.”

Though Stamford had few Jewish families, Strauss said he never felt any discrimination in the town.

“I never thought about being Jewish, except my parents wouldn’t let me go to school on Yom Kippur,” he said in a 1981 interview with The News.

The future politician gave an early sign of his ability to adapt to changing situations. Though Jewish, he joined the Baptist Young People’s Union because “that’s where the girls were” and even got elected its president. “Of course, the preacher had to put a stop to that, because I wasn’t a member of that church.”

Strauss attended the University of Texas. He became interested in politics, “electrified by Franklin Roosevelt,” and held a part-time job working for a Texas legislator. He also formed a friendship with fellow student John Connally, who in 1937 got him involved in Lyndon Johnson’s first successful congressional campaign.

He went on to law school and in 1941 married Helen Jacobs of Dallas, whose father was a paper factory executive. She died in 1998.

In the early 1940s, Strauss served four years in the FBI in Iowa, Ohio and Dallas. In 1945, he and friends formed the law firm that became Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. It thrived, and so did he, through shrewd investments in real estate, radio stations and banking.

In 1968, Connally gave Strauss his first national political post by making him the state’s Democratic national committeeman.

He was pushed aside when the liberal forces of George McGovern took control of the party. After McGovern’s landslide loss, Strauss won a tight contest to become the party’s national chairman.

Siegel said Strauss “restored the balance” between “a very energized left wing that organized around opposition to the Vietnam War and a rather benign moderate wing that didn’t assert itself.”

“He was more than a Democrat,” longtime party operative Bob Neuman said of Strauss. “He was a builder and a strategist, a diplomat and a leader in things beyond party politics. While he had a Texas-sized ego, he was uncommonly funny and warmhearted. He used a telephone like a violinist uses a Stradivarius.”

Strauss also named Carter to lead a party-wide campaign effort during the 1974 midterm elections. The job gave the little-known Georgia governor the springboard needed to win the presidency in 1976.

Carter, Reagan years

Two months after he was inaugurated, Carter tapped Strauss for the only job he had indicated earlier to friends he wanted — special trade representative.

He later was the president’s chief Middle East peace negotiator, briefly directed the administration’s anti-inflation effort, and chaired Carter’s 1980 re-election campaign.

It was a frustrating time, since the real power lay with Carter’s longtime Georgia aides, Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell. And the bid ended in failure: Ronald Reagan carried 44 of 50 states.

Strauss, however, remained in the center of Washington political life as one of the town’s best known wheeler-dealers.

In 1983, Reagan named Strauss to a bipartisan commission on Central America. When the White House became enmeshed in the Iran-contra affair in late 1986, Strauss was among those whom Reagan consulted.

Strauss enjoyed especially close relations with Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, who was national GOP chairman while Strauss held the top Democratic post, and with Baker, who was Bush’s secretary of state.

Still, just about everyone in Washington was surprised in June 1991 when Bush asked Strauss to become U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, serving in effect as the main go-between between Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

After the 1992 election, Strauss returned home and rejoined his law firm.